Kunst gegen Kälte is a journey through various perspectives on a space self-managed by homeless individuals. The starting point was a one-week intervention by Christoph Schlingensief in 1997: in a former police station near Hamburger Hauptbahnhof, the “Prototyp einer neuen Bahnhofsmission” (“prototype of a new station mission”) emerged. What began as an artistic staging developed over 25 years into a collective reality — with a soup kitchen, cultural program, city center actions, the founding of an association, and self-organized structures.

The “Mission” was both stage and refuge, everyday life and exception, positioned between art and responsibility, visibility and displacement, inclusion and resistance. Photographs by Markus Scholz accompany the publication from the heart of the action and document a long-standing relationship with the practice and the people on site.

The publication addresses questions about the role of art in social spaces: How does a city deal with visible homelessness in its center? How were homeless individuals able to escape their role as “Befürsorgte” (“those in need of care”)? What remains when artistic initiators deliberately step back? Is art allowed to be “nützlich” (“useful”) — and for whom?

»PRIMAVERA« explorestheresurgenceoffascismin Europe throughthenorthern Italian Alps, oncea Nazi strongholdand a centerofpartisanresistance. The Ossola Valley, a keybattlegroundin 1944, sawbothbrutal executionsand the brief establishment of a partisanrepublic. Blending Alpine landscapes, historicalimages, and portraitsofyoungactivistsand witnesses, the project reflects on Italy’santi-fascist legacyand its relevance to the growing right-wing populism across Europe today.

How can a library oppose the violent past of a building?

The Library Against War, Fascism, and National Socialism consists of the book estate of Gian Pietro Maria Marzola and is located in BASIS on the grounds of a former military barracks in Schlanders, South Tyrol.
Gian Pietro Maria Marzola was a university professor of surgery in Innsbruck and passed away in 2017. As a young man, he experienced the suffering and horrors of the Second World War. His extensive book estate documents a profound engagement with the history of violence of the First and Second World Wars. At the request of his relatives, the book estate is now housed in BASIS and has been available there since May 2025 to the community as well as to all interested people.

BASIS is located on the site of the former Drusus barracks, which were built in 1935–1936 and were used by both Italian fascists and German National Socialists. In the vacant areas of the site, propagandistic inscriptions can still be found on the walls today, along with soldiers’ carved initials on window shutters and forgotten military relics in the garden. For many older residents of the community, the place is associated with painful memories.

BASIS occupies large areas of the site as a creative industry space that was previously missing in the region. Used both as a workspace and as an event venue and communal workshop, BASIS is especially frequented by young people and artists in the region.

Despite the project’s supraregional acclaim, BASIS is threatened by planned demolition policies and the conversion of the site into residential housing. Preserving the military barracks and thus the current use by BASIS offers the region not only a community-oriented space but also the possibility for critical engagement and remembrance of regional history and the traumas connected with the Second World War. So far, a critical remembrance of the violent past has not taken place on the site. The Library Against War, Fascism, and National Socialism aims to enable a beginning of such engagement.

The library does not see itself as a closed archive of knowledge but as a workspace that invites critical reflection on history. Its infrastructure consists of a central bookshelf in the middle of the room, a worktable, a book display, and a printer. It was designed to be mobile and can be spatially adapted for events and readings. Yellow book supports mark the thematic focuses chosen to facilitate research and highlight gaps. Yellow reading notes, which are available in the library, offer the opportunity to share personal insights by leaving them inside the respective books after reading. An accompanying brochure documents photographically the relics of the violent past within the former barracks grounds and the studio house.

Text by Irini Schwab

Exhibition graphics for “Pipps Pappa. Oder eine wirklich wahre Geschichte aus dem Pazifik“ at MARKK Hamburg, created in collaboration with Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik.

The interactive exhibition explores Carl Pettersson’s life and the colonial history of the Pacific, drawing parallels to Pippi Longstocking’s adventures in Taka-Tuka-Land. It highlights plantation systems and trade with Hamburg used as means of exploitation.

To encourage visitors—especially children and families—to reflect on colonial history and its narratives in children’s literature, we designed a multi-layered approach to storytelling, organized into clearly defined, visually distinct, and color-coded chapters. The interactive stations and deliberate use of varied materials invite visitors to actively engage with the exhibition.

Open till September 2026.

This year’s 4th edition of the Spring School, where students from Halle engage with residents of the Mansfeld region, was themed "Energien und Netze”.

For the publication, I again applied efficient templates and distribution methods. Designed within an eight-hour window, the A4 format keeps production simple, affordable, and accessible as a print@home option. For the first time, the exhibition — composed of enlarged pages from the publication — was displayed not only in Hettstedt but also in Halle at @werkleitz Festival "Tank oder Teller".

More info on this years topic and PDF-Version:
🔗 werkleitz.de/energien-und-netze
🔗 afa.werkleitz.de/agentur-fur-aufbruch/spring-school

With students and educators of @contextual_images and Humangeografie @uni_halle . As well as a text-supervision by Carsten Tabel.

Fotos of the exhibition by Falk Wenzel.

»Lüderitz« is set in two places that are around 12,000 kilometers apart and yet share the same name: Lüderitz in northern Saxony-Anhalt and Lüderitz in southwestern Namibia. The former is the origin of the von Lüderitz family, from which the merchant Adolf Lüderitz later emerged. In 1883, he laid the foundation for the consequential colonization of what is now Namibia by fraudulently acquiring land. The starting point was a place named after him: Lüderitz. Until 1915, the country was under the violent „protection“ of the German Reich and was at the same time the site of rich diamond deposits and the scene of the first genocide in the 20th century.

Also, »Lüderitz« won the silver medal Deutscher Fotobuchpreis and has been shortlisted for the Dummyaward 2024 and is now in tour.

»Lüderitz«
Hardcover, 162 pages, 20 x 26 cm
German and English
Sold Out

With texts by Werner Hillebrecht and Lucia Halder.

Against Time, Between Path and Time — Play and Fast-Forward as Vague Timekeepers of Distance.
Worn-out and broken clocks. Planetary timelines, sudden events, endless loops, buffer icons, and pause. At night, as time begins to blur, some things become clearer. Certain information remains legible in the dark — because that’s when it matters most: awareness, first aid, escape routes.
The site-specific wayfinding system for the Fuchsbau Festival 2023 “Against Time” symbolically reflects a wide range of aspects related to movement time, consumption time, and tools for measuring time — somewhere between commitment and narration. The information carriers can be reused in the coming year, with stands adapted or repurposed.

with Marie Schuster

"Das ist meine Arbeit" explores working conditions in the creative field through a series of experimental, participatory formats. Focusing on graphic design and its intersections with education, the project brings together workshops, role-play, field research, and personal reflection. It aims to create space for collective learning and critical exchange beyond institutional frameworks.

It began with a theory workshop designed to equip students with a critical framework that could support their work on the independently planned HURRA-Festival (@hurrahurrafestival). A field trip to Rovereto opened space for exchange with Bianca Elzenbaumer of Brave New Alps, offering insight into socially engaged design practices. The project also included the live-action role play The Great Success Machine, an invited format conceived and led by Till Wittwer, which challenged dominant ideas of success and productivity. In addition, Jula Baltschun was invited to contribute her concept for a systemic constellation titled How can I secure my income as an artist?, which addressed the structural and emotional dimensions of precarity in artistic work.
The documentation brings these diverse approaches together and concludes with a personal statement.